benfrog writes “According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook’s Board of Directors was all but out of the picture when Mark Zuckerberg struck the $1 billion deal to purchase Instagram, the yet-profitless photo-sharing service. From the article: ‘It was a remarkably speedy three-day path to a deal for Facebook—a young company taking pains to portray itself as blue-chip ahead of its initial public offering of stock in a few weeks that could value it at up to $100 billion. Companies generally prefer to bring in ranks of lawyers and bankers to scrutinize a deal before proceeding, a process that can eat up days or weeks. Mr. Zuckerberg ditched all that. By the time Facebook’s board was brought in, the deal was all but done. The board, according to one person familiar with the matter, ‘Was told, not consulted.'”

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Zuckerberg Made Instagram Deal Alone

Mama had it right — procrastination is bad — but mama never knew Apple. For Leopard users still clinging tightly to their MobileMe account, it looks like the path to iCloud just got a wee bit cheaper. Qualifying MobileMe holdouts are reportedly receiving email notifications that point them to a special portal; behind a registration form, folks are finding a free copy of OS X 10.6 (on DVD, no less). The goal here is to get customers to make yet another jump to Lion (an extra $29), but the idea of keeping most of that cloud functionality via iCloud is certainly enticing. As MacNN so accurately points out, it’s odd that Apple’s not including the $69 USB drive version of Lion, which contains the ability to boost even Leopard users to OS X 10.7. If you’re one that generally skips out on reading those automated Apple emails, you might want to make an exception for this one.

Apple offering free Snow Leopard update to MobileMe holdouts originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Apr 2012 23:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s introduction of the Windows 8 SKUs on Monday left many of the details of the corporate-oriented Enterprise edition unknown. The company has started to fill in the blanks in a new blog post. Windows 8 Enterprise will include a number of features not found in Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, the ARM-oriented Windows RT, or the emerging markets edition. On top of these software features, the Software Assurance license scheme is being changed to offer customers some new capabilities.

The exclusive software features include the ability to create Windows To Go portable USB installations, DirectAccess VPN-less remote access to corporate networks, BrancheCache cached access to remote fileservers, AppLocker software restrictions, enhanced 3D, USB, and touch performance in VDI deployments, and the ability to side-load Metro-style applications.

To make full use of these features, Software Assurance usage rights are changing too. Any employee with a company PC with a Software Assurance license will also have a corresponding Windows To Go license, so that they can boot a secure, corporate-controlled environment on their home PCs. This can be extended further with Companion Device licenses (for extra cost), allowing employees to access corporate environments through either Windows To Go or VDI on up to four personally-owned systems.

There will be a license change relating to the Windows RT operating system used on ARM machines: when used as a companion to a Software Assurance-licensed machine, the ARM device can be used to access a VDI image with no additional license required.

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The Windows 8 Enterprise SKU: Windows To Go and new Software Assurance benefits

A Russian national living in Brooklyn has been charged with computer and hacking crimes totaling $1.45 million stolen from retail stock brokerages and state or federal taxpayer coffers.

Petr Murmylyuk, 31, was the ringleader of a gang that hacked into online brokerage accounts and used them to transact money-losing trades, according to a criminal complaint filed in US District Court in New Jersey. The ring then used sham stock trading accounts and bank accounts to take advantage of those losses.

In some cases, the compromised brokerage accounts were used to short sell shares of thinly traded securities for prices that were higher than the selling prices. Short sales are sales of shares that the investor borrows in the expectation they will drop in price by the time they are paid back. By shorting them at a price higher than the current trading price, the transactions caused instant losses to the compromised accounts that made them. Minutes later, Murmylyuk would allegedly cover the short position by purchasing the shares at a price that was midway between the short sale price and the trading price, a maneuver immediately generating a profit.

The compromised accounts were administered by Fidelity Investments, Scottrade, E*Trade, and Charles Schwab. The companies collectively sustained more than $1 million in losses covering the theft, court papers allege. Other companies also affected included OptionsHouse and Trade Station Securities. In addition to criminal charges of fraud conspiracy, unauthorized access to computers, and securities fraud filed by the US Attorney’s office in New Jersey, the Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a civil lawsuit against Murmylyuk.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has also charged Murmylyuk with using a sham jobs placement website to steal the identities of more than 300 people, using them to generate more than $450,000 in fraudulent tax refunds. Because many of the people using the www.jobcentral2.net site were unemployed, they were less likely to have reported earned income, allowing Murmylyuk to file tax returns in their names without arousing suspicion.

Murmylyuk allegedly used Russian-language social networking sites to recruit students from Kazakhstan to act as mules to launder the fraudulently obtained funds. Several of them returned to their native country shortly after setting up bank accounts, and have been charged in absentia. If convicted of the federal charges, he faces a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. In New York, he has been charged with computer trespassing, first-degree identity theft, and money laundering among other offenses.

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Russian national charged with $1.4 million hacking scam

gManZboy writes in with a troubling story about tax dollars being used for overseas call center training. “Despite President Obama’s recent call for companies to ‘insource’ jobs sent overseas, it turns out that the federal government itself is spending millions of dollars to train foreign students for employment in some booming career fields–including working in offshore call centers that serve U.S. businesses. The program is called JEEP, which stands for Job Enabling English Proficiency. It’s available to college students in the Philippines through USAID. That’s the same agency that until a couple of years ago was spending millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money to train offshore IT workers in Sri Lanka. Congressman Tim Bishop (D-New York), told about the program on Tuesday, called it ‘surprising and distressing.’ Bishop recently introduced a bill that would make companies that outsource call centers ineligible for government contracts.”

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Asian Call Center Workers Trained With US Tax Dollars

An anonymous reader writes “A Wired story claims Amazon’s cloud now hosts enough companies and traffic to generate 1% of all Internet traffic (and visits from 1/3 of daily Internet users). An amazing number if its true. And a little scary for one company to host this much cloud infrastructure.”

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Amazon's Cloud Now 1% of Internet Traffic

When it comes to particle science, it’s not all about huge winding tunnels and god particles. Super/collider, a group that aims to promote science through eye-catching creative methods, teamed up with designer Patrick Stevenson-Keating to craft this relatively simple — but working– particle accelerator for Milan Design week. The setup involves several hand-blown bulbs, with a vacuum inside them allowing electrons to rocket from side to side, lit in a purple haze thanks to a phosphorous screen at one end. The whole thing is fashioned from the relatively commonplace gear you see above, although a how-to guide still remains unfortunately non-existent.

Handmade particle accelerator unveiled at Milan Design Week, Higgs-Boson a no-show originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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VIllage Telco’s Mesh Potato, which retails for $119 and provides both data and voice services via wifi to communities with limited internet and mobile phone access.

The statistics, by now, are familiar to those of us following technology in the developing world. A recent article in The Economist looks at Africa’s booming economy, identifying mobile phones as one of the major drivers behind the continent’s growth: “Mobile phones have penetrated deep into the bush. More than 600m Africans have one; perhaps 10% of those have access to mobile-internet services. The phones make boons like savings accounts and information on crop prices ever more available.”

But as a continent of over a billion people, that means some 400 million—twice the population of Brazil—still do not have access to mobile communications. And even fewer have access to the Internet. Those who do have access to a phone spend more than half of their disposable income just to stay connected. At the same time, building a tower to cover many parts of Africa can be a challenge, both because of the costs of the tower and the lack of access to available radio bandwidth.

In comes Village Telco, an organization working on technology to leap past these challenges and offer a low cost communications option for Africans in rural areas. “It caught me by surprise,” founder Steve Song told Core77, as he referred to the “incredible pace and change of mobile technology.”

An early prototype of the Mesh Potato. Image courtesy the Shuttleworth Foundation on a Creative Commons License.

Recognizing the growing need for voice and data services for all citizens across the continent, Song, based in Cape Town, set out to find a solution to the challenges of accessible connectivity. He had been following wireless hacker movement who had discovered that Linksys routers were built on open-source software and that a wave guide antenna could be built using a soup can—”a cantenna,” he told me—that would distribute a broadband signal several kilometers away.

Based on this technology, Village Telco developed the “Mesh Potato,” a wi-fi router adapted to connect with other devices like it and distribute wi-fi over large areas at low cost. It’s the same basic principle that allows an Apple Airport Express to extend a wi-fi signal around your home. When deployed in a place like Bo-kaap, South Africa, a community on a hill, four of these devices serve as a backbone network, while dozens more placed on individual rooftops extend the network.

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Hacking Wi-Fi Routers to Bring Voice and Data to Rural Communities

By now, we’re all quite familiar with the Java-driven trojan that’s affected thousands of Apple’s rigs, and while the numbers seem to have drastically dropped since the first Cupertino fix, there’s still a plethora of machines carrying the bug. According to Symantec, the number of infected computers is now at around 140,000, seeing a decline of over 460,000 since April 9th. Still, the security outfit remains puzzled by the fact, as it expected the digits to be somewhere near the 99,000 mark by now. Perhaps this is due to some folks not even being aware of Flashback’s existence, or maybe not checking for software updates as often as most of us. Either way, we hope you’ve already used one of the tools Apple handed you.

Around 140,000 Apple machines still infected with Flashback malware, says Symantec originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Apr 2012 07:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Around 140,000 Apple machines still infected with Flashback malware, says Symantec

We’ve heard it rumored, but this is as close to an official confirmation as we’ve seen. Windows Phone 8, affectionately known as Apollo ’round these parts, will reportedly be available on every single Windows Phone device to ever ship. Let that sink in a second. Now that you’ve been appropriately wowed, we’ll point you to the video just after the break, which shows a Microsoft spokesperson affirming that “all” devices — including those first-generation handsets from LG and Samsung — will be included in the WP8 rollout. No details regarding timing were revealed — and it remains to be seen if this will prove true in the States, where carriers have just as much say on updates as the OEMs — but you can consider us cautiously optimistic in the meantime.

Update: Hard to say if wires have been crossed, but The Verge is reporting that while apps are included in the upgrade path, the spokesperson here may have been incorrect in his assumptions that devices will be upgraded in due time. At this point, we’re left to wait for Microsoft to clear things up. So, Microsoft — care to clarify?

Continue reading Windows Phone 8 reportedly coming to ‘all’ WP smartphones (updated)

Windows Phone 8 reportedly coming to ‘all’ WP smartphones (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Apr 2012 19:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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